Posted
by
timothyon Sunday December 19, 2010 @08:21PM
from the can-you-hear-me-now dept.

destinyland writes "The US Army is seriously considering the idea of issuing a smartphone to every soldier, and they're already modernizing one Texas brigade 'through a range of electronic devices that will include not just smartphones but tablet devices, e-reader and mini-projectors.' The company that developed Patriot missiles has already created several dedicated military apps for both iPhone and Android phones, including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield. Interestingly, the army is likely to use an off-the-shelf model, heightening the war between Apple and Android phones. Apple's non-replaceable batteries may become an issue in the field, since 'plugging the phone in to recharge isn't always a viable option in the middle of combat.'"

That's the conscientious one. The regular guy will be like "Gotta get back to you later, sir, I am updating my status now".

But actually you should not read too much into it. This is just another money grab from the military -- they, and their contractor friends must be getting hungry on the lean offerings of Obama's budget.

In Afghanistan? Yeah, they pretty much are. But even if they weren't, what's to stop the US Army from running their own mobile cell networks? You could easily integrate a cell transponder into a Humvee or MRAP, and/or established fixed stations at FOBs, and all of the data could be routed through existing SATCOM equipment to SIPRNET.

This is a really good idea, but I foresee this program is gonna be something that requires custom hardware development. Off the shelf smart phones aren't gonna cut it. For one, how are you gonna see the screen at night, without it lighting up your position to the enemy just as good as if you'd shined a flashlight in your face? It would need to work in very dark (tactical) conditions, be usable by soldiers wearing gloves, be durable enough to withstand combat, etc.

Can you imagine a device like this on every soldier's wrist that instantly shows him the location of allies and fellow soldiers, suspected enemies, etc, plotted out on an overhead map with actual satellite photos of terrain, and real time GPS positioning? Like FalconView (and already existing system used on PCs) it could show the positions of minefields, previously reported encounters with enemy forces, all kinds of details. How about if it could plot a route for a soldier from point A to point B, with the best use of cover, using all the information currently available, say if he is unfamiliar with the terrain and the squad leader just got shot? For those with a security clearance (squad leader, radio man, etc), it could be integrated with the existing IRC networks on SIPRNET to let him view real time text chatter about the tactical situation. I mean there is a billion ways this technology could be used to great benefit on today's and tomorrow's battlefield.

I know you were being sarcastic but it probably has never been so challenging. Going all the way back to our own revolution a bunch of farmers with out data rifles managed to defeat British regular army, although with some French assistance. Its also true at the time there was less separation between a hunting rifle and an army rifle in terms of tech.

Here we are in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting farmers with outdated rifles and help from Iran, Syria, and likely Pakistan. They have the benefit of history to know what works and what does not against a superior force and lots of them have experience fighting the Russian army. Their tech might be a little outdated but its also true a 35 year old Russian AK is still plenty lethal, as are left over Rocket propelled grenades and launchers we gave them. There are probably a fare number of single shot WWI and WWII era rifles we gave them to fight the Russians still floating about as well.

So yes it really has never been harder and asymmetric warfare has not really been easy for two centuries; with the possible exception of the Mexican War.

So yes it really has never been harder and asymmetric warfare has not really been easy for two centuries

The goals of war have never been harder than they are today.

We want a war, but we go out of our way to protect civilians, even those who support the enemy. We want to respect other cultures. We want to prosecute our own soldiers for war crimes that in the past would not be considered crimes. We have goals like "bring democracy" and "win hearts and minds" -- things that past wars did not give a crap about.

I mean, asymmetric warfare has always been hard, but it's a lot harder than it has been in the past not

Yea, funny mental picture, but I remember as far back as 1999 getting a call on my cell from a friend while in the middle of combat training. Apparently she was freaking out for the next day or two because she heard gunfire and explosions in the background, with me saying "kinda busy, call ya back".

I had a similar experience. A few years ago I was trying to keep contact with a girl while I was away, so gave her a call while on an exercise. During the call she said 'what is that banging noise?'... 'oh that, that's just some artillery fire... so anyway, what are you wearing?'

There are many others like it, but this one is mine. My iPhone is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my iPhone is useless. Without my iPhone, I am useless. I must text my iPhone true. I must text faster than my mother, who is trying to block me. I must text my friends before she grounds me. I will. Before God I swear this creed: my iPhone and myself are defenders of my social life, we are the masters of our parents, we are the saviors of my social life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen.

I didn't intend that to be that creepy when I started it, but I think that describes 90% of high school and college students I've interacted with.

Didn't they just ban all portable mass storage devices as security risks? I mean what do they think these smart phones are?

I don't think it being a "portable mass storage device" will be a problem since it won't be able to connect to their machines. Though handing every solder a small, portable video/photo camera with instant upload capabilities might not be a smart idea...

You do realise most phones these days can be connected as mass storage via USB? Then there's WLAN, Bluetooth, IrDA, Screen codes, Accustic coupling.... there are literally thousands of ways to get big amounts of data out of an Computer with a Smartphone.

I think the key is that it's not a mass storage device, it's another computer on the network. As such, they will have ways of controlling what is contained on it the way they do with all their other machines. And since they presumably already deal with laptops, they should already understand the risks of portability and have procedures in place. The problem with dumb storage devices is that you can never have that control.

They think they are computers that don't require you to have a desk. That is all. They have already replaced many PC's with iPod touch, because they look at it as a mobile PC, and they value mobility. That is why the US military is really interested in iPads.

iOS devices do not attach as USB mass storage. You have to add an app like Air Sharing (which is easily prohibited by a device policy) just to see a file system.

I haven't seen much consumer electronics equipment that could survive a combat environment. Seems like just the sand alone in Iraq would mess up a lot of devices pretty quick.

And that's the thing -- it's all well and good to say that a certain piece of equipment will give soldiers some kind of advantage, but after a while the "advantage" becomes the norm. What happens then, when a piece of equipment that a soldier has come to rely upon just stops working? Do they carry on like before they had the equipment, or does what was once an advantage become a disadvantage, as the soldiers have to essentially retrain themselves on the fly?

Batteries, cracked screens, fouled-up input devices, software bugs... there's a reason why equipment designed for the military costs so much more than consumer equipment..

I doubt this is intended for the battlefield. Remember,soldiers spend 99.999% of their time not in combat, doing training or planning or arranging to get from point a to point b or whatever. The smarphones would probably fill a similar role as they do in any modern corporation, having little direct involvement in actual combat operations for the foreseeable future.

"including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield" and "isn't always a viable option in the middle of combat". So I'm actually wondering what they're going to be doing with them. It'd be rather sensless to take smartphones with you to get mud, sand, shrapnel and whatever on them. And when are you supposed to use them? "Yeah I'm pinned down. Let me take a picture of the guy shooting at us, maybe we'll see him again later"

If its just for stuff like wanting to find out whether your friend's in the mess hall or taking a nap or whatever would be fine. But then why do the batteries matter?

I know, but parse out what the army is actually considering, vs. what some company is pushing at them. Here's more of the quote you provided: "The company that developed the Patriot missile system has created several dedicated military apps for both systems, including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield."

Defense contractors everwhere are spinning off imaginative "apps" on how these things might be used. I still think the Army's actual implementation (if any) will be much, much less ambitious.

The use is to run apps. Same thing you do with a computer. Instead of a PC notebook, they want to use iPod touch and iPhones because that makes more sense if you are MOBILE. The US military has many of its own iOS apps already. The first use was sniper calculators.

Wouldn't/Shouldn't they rather use military-grade equipment for that? Like a radio? Are they not equipped with this sort of thing already? Stuff that can survive being dropped in mud, stepped on and get singed by an IED?

I agree that they're dumb, but playing devil's advocate: these devices are effectively multipurpose tools that come with a lot of hardware that could be purposed flexibly. Anything the phone can do, I suspect they already have: GPS, compass, radio, camera, etc...but suppose you now want your GPS device to be able to keep "bookmarks"? To triangulate a fire position from mulitple units? I don't know shit about military actions but I can see the value in a rapidly repurposable portable general computer. Plus o

There is probably a real military use to a smartphone. But to a real military smartphone. One that has default encryption on, that has a "total emission silence" mode, that has a standard battery slot that can be used on many equipments, that resist shocks, power surges, that work well in area with bad coverage, that boots really quickly, that has shortcuts for urgence situation, that has a LOUD mode that can be heard inside an armored transport.

They treat iPhones and iPod touch as disposable, because they are very cheap by military standards. So instead of having one $10,000 "military-grade" device they buy 50 iPod touch, and the 50 iPod touch are actually more rugged because you can break them and easily get a replacement.

An iPhone can survive whatever you need it to you just choose the right case from the 10,000 or more available options. There are only 3 iPhone form factors no matter what kind of case you want, it already exists.

Nice theory - but I've seen a lot of cell phone photos, and I wouldn't want any diagnosis of my injuries to be made based on those blurry things. Plus what, exactly, is a cell phone photo going to tell you that "sucking chest wound from a bullet" isn't?

I know EVERY company is trying to make stuff so that skilled labor is no longer needed. (The newest bulldozers and motor graders use joysticks, no more long training on hydraulic levers).

There is nothing intrinsically "skilled" about a control system designed in the early 1900's, as opposed to the early 2000's. You do not eliminate the need for skilled labour by changing the user interface...

As a former grunt, and person who LOVES technology -I say nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo These will be tracking devices... there will be nowhere to hide! and your right on they will be for garrison.

I haven't seen much consumer electronics equipment that could survive a combat environment.

I would bet that military personnel in Iraq or Afghanistan are far better equipped when it comes to "consumer electronics" than your average Slashdot user.

They've got so many laptops, tablets, game consoles and handheld gaming systems, portable DVD players, digital cameras, iPads etc that I'm surprised there's any time left for gay sex or torture. Seriously, a family member in Kandahar is always after me to send him

No military equipment costs so much because of a few factors, Reason #1, the government is too stupid to get a good deal on anything. The idea that competitive bidding gets you anywhere is a scam. Second the maker is only going to make around a few hundred thousand of whatever. Why waste resources selling to an army of 500,000 vs the 50 million customers in the US and beyond.

I'm sure they approached Steve Jobs about this, and he probably blew them off for selling iPhones to Verizon Wireless customers.

The US military has the world's largest collection of iPod touch, for which they did indeed get a deal from Apple. Right after the iPad launched, the US military showed up at Apple headquarters and got a hands-on, because they have had such good success with iPod touch and Xcode apps, they wanted to replace PC's with iPads ASAP.

Remember that the Department of Defense and NSA were absolutely huge NeXT customers. The tools you use to make an iOS app or Mac app are the same ones that were used to make NeXT app

This is honestly a freaking *great* idea. Do you know how most messages pass around in a deployed environment now? They send someone- a "runner" from one end of the post to another. It is the most ludicrous thing I've ever seen. We spent all this money developing the encryption infrastructure that civilians use at the drop of a dime(literally!) and we can't take advantage of that for passing messages around a post? Especially time-sensitive information? It's past time that we put some of the star-trek technology we've developed to use.

They should give the diplomats and foreign intelligence also these devices and change the name to youtubeleaks. Than we at least have some nice footage to see the gory details of what is done in the name of the US citizen..

And don't ask me what their criteria for blocking sites is, either. It seems to be pretty much random at this point. I haven't used US military computers for a while, but we have the same kinds of.... "issues" in Canada - for instance, I can access www.slashdot.com without a problem, but rss.slashdot.com gets blocked because it's apparently a "trojan/virus site". Also games

Rather than straight out "off the shelf" devices, wouldn't they be better served by something equivalent to a Panasonic Toughbook. Maybe that could be covered by 3rd party cases (with built-in batteries) but an iPhone is something that requires a bit of protection even for everyday use.

Smartphones are built pretty tough actually, and there are tons of wonderful 3rd party cases that can make iPhones pretty indestructible.

I think a charger + case all-in-one would be the best bet, similar to the mophie juice pack air [mophie.com] because swapping batteries out of a phone while on the battlefield doesn't sound like such a hot idea to me. No smartphone has a long enough battery life anyway, so a second battery in a case would probably be best, and maybe the case could have a easily swappable battery.

There are many, many, many iPhone cases of every possible description, all built to fit any model exactly, because there are only 3 different form factors after 3.5 years. And iPhones and iPod touch are cheap enough by military standards they just treat them as disposable. They have bullets that cost more.

Some of the places they could fight probably are out of range (even if in range, could be a vulnerability, an infiltration mission could be badly screwed because someone called the wrong number, or would be bad of someones position could be triangulated). So or they use satellite signal, or they don't plan use it in the battlefield. Of course, are also good pocket computers with camera, gps and so on, so would love that them add i.e. some augumented reality apps to the current set for all.

That is exactly why whoever wins the contract NEEDS to bring back the manufacturing to America. Considering that Apple has not done manufacturing in decades and never on this scale, then it would make sense for Motorola win.

The US military already has the largest collection of iPod touch in the world. They put them in rugged cases, and they don't really care if you break one, since by military standards, they are disposable devices.

So, you're going to put a comm device on every soldier that emits RF much of the time?

You better seed the whole place with decoy receiver transmitters or relay devices.

Else a military with any level of technical sophistication will use it to target and trigger munitions.

(I had a similar idea when I was in the Army still in the 80s. But it involved specifically putting out more decoys to act as relays than there were soldiers/real radios. Some of them moving, so that wouldn't be a way to decide which was real. Wasn't very practical at the time due to limits on the computing power available.)

Don't other people own cell phones? Even if you perhaps you discount the natives in certain cases, but what about press, red cross, and similar? You wouldn't get very clever results using it.

The fact that they're considering their use means there is an actual network connection to use. Maybe in the 80s it would have been the case, but nowadays you even have farmers who can hardly afford to buy clothes, using mobile devices to check market prices for their goods online.

Hmmm I'd think they'd at least want something ruggedized like this one [androidandme.com] that already meets military specs. There's no way a stock iPhone or more 'droid phones would stand up to any kind of abused in the field.

I see this as an excellent opportunity for defence to be able to utilise the innovation of the small software vendor. Generally software supply contracts are won by big players. A platform like this enables small players to more easily get in the game as they can release apps tagged as defence apps, and the forces can see if they are useful or not. And yes, I haven't used American spelling in my post.

And here I am, considering dumping my smartphone for a good old fashioned dumbphone. Don't get me wrong, by HTC Hero is great as a web browser, a text messenger, a Wordfeud platform. If I want to see what time a movie is playing or what planets are visible in tonight's sky, the smartphone is awesome. But god help me if I want to make an actual phone call. If they thought repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell was going to be bad for military readiness...

This sounds a lot like the old PLRS/JTIDS hybrid (Position Location Reporting System/Joint Tactical Information Dissemination System) ideas that were being shown off around the US Army Signal Center in 1980 or so. It would have relayed back the location of each unit, and allowed messages to be sent back and forth.

GPS didn't exist yet, so you kept location with timing between the nodes of the network. It was text messages at that time. Very limited, but still the core of the idea.

"including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield."

Now, lets say I am a soldier that has just been killed. My device does not know this, but the opposing force does. They pickup my phone, start running through a list of who is on the battlefield, and designate where their snipers need to aim.

Alternatively, opposing force finds device, and now appears on the location system as the soldier. This could be a bit of an issue if they send a message via it for everyone

Android with custom hardened OS hands down, Apple has never impressed me with security and they've run off of "macs don't get viruses" for too long (although they never officially state this it is a common misconception).

Macs don't get viruses. The misconception that they do is yours. There are zero OS X viruses. There are 3 Mac OS trojans, all of which the system will refuse to run. On iOS, there is no native malware at all.

iOS is much, much more secure than "Android" which is a meaningless term. Talk to us about a particular Android phone after it has been abused by a hardware manufacturer and a carrier, that is the real world. Unsigned apps don't even run on iOS. It is possible for an organization such as the US military

If you need more than one battery on an iPhone, you add a second, external battery, typically built into a case, and that battery is of course, replaceable, you can carry 10 if you like. iPhone also has about double the battery life of any Android phone right out of the box, so if we're talking batteries, Android is at a distinct disadvantage.

The US military already owns the largest collection of iPod touch in the world. The fact that it requires almost no training and maintenance is a key feature. Powerful

WAIT A MINUTE. Are we talking about the same Patriot missiles that barely managed to muster 40% success rate in Israel during the first(of many) gulf war? And these nice folks are making apps for soldiers that may using them to make critical decisions that may affect the lives of our soldiers? Obviously some people in our military have not read their history books.

Seriously, these need to be made in a none Chinese nation, IDEALLY, in America. This would offer a company like Motorola an opportunity to bring back manufacturing and then apply it to sales in America as well.

In my day we paid for whores out of pocket, but now the UCMJ for no reason other than to pander (pun intended) to Bible Thumpers and Feminazis says that's illegal. It would be fair if they did fund brothels in compensation.:)